Month: September 2010

By Gray Creech
NASA Dryden public affairs
Sept. 9, 2010

Dennis Hines, NASA Dryden’s Associate Director for Programs, joined me for a chat. 

I asked him what his thoughts are regarding the Green Aviation Summit.

“What we’ve heard is the importance of green aviation, and NASA has put in place robust technology efforts to address these green aviation goals. As (Charlie) Bolden emphasized, this must be a partnership between academia, industry, and other government agencies to achieve these goals.”

Next, I asked Dennis to give us a brief overview of NASA Dryden’s role in green aviation.

“The X-48B we’re flying at Dryden is clearly a poster child for proving-out advanced green aviation airframe concepts. We’re also working on a laminar flow project with Texas A&M, putting a glove on one of our G-III aircraft to test a technique to improve laminar flow.”

Hines continued, “We’re continuing development of Fiber Optic Shape Sensing technology for the structural monitoring of lightweight, advanced aircraft structures and materials for advanced aircraft like Global Observer wing tests recently accomplished with AeroVironment at Dryden. We’re going to be sharing this technology with Boeing on their Phantom Eye aircraft as well.”

By Gray Creech
NASA Dryden public affairs
Sept. 9, 2010

Welcome back to the 2010 NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate’s Green Aviation Summit at NASA’s Ames Research Center.

Yesterday, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that NASA has a “critical responsibility” to the flying public to develop environmentally responsible solutions to the nation’s most pressing aviation problems.

“We need to make some changes — both in the design of aircraft and in the way they transit through our skies to not only maintain, but improve safety and efficiency,” Bolden said. “That’s a huge challenge, but we at NASA enthusiastically accept it.”